We’re excited to welcome all of the new partners who took part in this investment round, particularly Amit Kumar from Accel (who will be joining Coast’s board as a director), Rebecca Liu-Doyle from Insight Partners (who is joining as an observer), and the many founders and CEOs in fintech and transportation who participated. Amit and Rebecca have a deep understanding of Coast’s vision and the challenges that modern fleet businesses face and will be ideal partners in Coast’s next stage of growth. Accel has more to say about their investment in Coast at their blog, and TechCrunch also covered the news. You can read the official press release here.
At the same time, Coast has launched its fleet expense management platform in collaboration with Visa, who have been tremendously supportive of our mission. We’ve been learning a ton from our customers and are working every day to help them improve their businesses and the daily lives of their mobile workforces. We’ve built Coast to give our customers unmatched control, flexibility, and convenience in managing their expenses through innovative payments tools. We’re inspired by the small business owners who use Coast to help their companies and their employees thrive.
What this round means for Coast
The Series A marks an important milestone in our journey. Coast’s mission is to be the financial platform for the future of transportation. We do this by building honest and innovative financial technology products for fleet businesses. This investment will help us continue that mission by funding development of our core payments and expense management technology, and allowing us to scale our customer support operations, as well as growing our sales and marketing to reach more customers.
Our progress since raising the Seed
Since raising our seed funding, Coast has already:
- built a first-of-its-kind, patent-pending expense management system based on SMS to save drivers time at the gas pump and avoid the need to manage vehicle or driver cards;
- created a system for fully fungible expense cards that significantly simplifies administration of a fuel card program and saves administrators time on assigning cards and replacing lost and broken cards;
- provided real-time software tools that enable fine-grained control, security, and visibility into the expenses of a field-based workforce;
- launched a simple, automated online application that can prequalify businesses for a charge card in minutes;
- enabled, in partnership with Visa, a universally accepted fleet payments program;
- offered a charge card with monthly payment terms, which helps companies manage their cash flow, and with no personal guarantee, which gives business owners peace of mind while enjoying the benefits of a fleet expense management platform;
- all while returning 2¢ per gallon to every business that buys fuel using the Coast card;
- and not charging the kinds of unfair fees that have become all too common in the fleet payments industry: per-gallon administration fees, per-transaction fees, electronic payments fees, phone payment fees, check processing fees, low gas price surcharges, inactive card fees, reporting fees, minimum administration fees, portal access fees, inflated late fees for higher unpaid balances.
What’s ahead for Coast
For Coast, this is just the beginning. In 2022, we plan to unveil new features and offerings that will be transformative for our fleet customers as they manage their field businesses. As just a few examples, we will:
- enable more controls, alerts, reporting, and reviews for program administrators, that provide our customers unrivaled visibility into their operations;
- allow more purchase categories on Coast’s Visa card beyond fuel, along with a real-time SMS-based approval process for one-off expenses employees need to make on the road;
- provide deep integrations into accounting, fleet management, and telematics systems, so customers can combine purchase data with the rest of their operations to make better decisions as they grow their businesses;
- roll out an expanded, industry-leading partnerships program, providing unique member benefits for fleet businesses;
This is a short list of items already on our roadmap. Our vision is grand and that will require us to solve problems like fuel payments for electric fleets, expense tracking for autonomous vehicles, and delivering new financial services beyond fuel payments altogether.
What’s next
Small businesses are the economic engine of the country and account for half of American jobs. But fleet and field service businesses are frequently the last to benefit from innovations in software and technology.
We have built a new expense management platform for fleets – one that is fair and transparent and provides a best-in-class experience to mobile fleet workers as well as fleet owners and managers. Coast’s innovative software allows fleets to run their businesses with control, security, and visibility. And we’re able to offer premium payments tools and expense management software for as little as $2 per active driver per month to compete with those that competitors might charge a business thousands of dollars to use.
If you operate a fleet business and are looking for a modern payments solution that is fair and transparent, please speak to our sales team or open an account online.
If you feel passionately about payments, fintech, small business, and/or transportation, come build a career at Coast.
We thank our customers, investors, and our team for the ongoing support and partnership.
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